Installing a volt meter

[Samurai_Dave]

I'm trying to install a voltmeter on to my Yamaha D50 outboard with the Yamaha 703 type control.

The Voltmeter unit has yellow and black wires for the guage and blue and black wires for the light. The control unit has single black, yellow, green and red wires plus pairs of red, blue and green wires. There were no fitting instructions in the box, is it as simple as yellow to yellow and black to black?

I want to check that the engine is charging the battery when it running as I can't pull start it if the battery went flat. I do carry an auxillary engine.

Thanks.

 

[jakeroyd]

Can't help with the wiring but you can check very easily that the battery is being charged.
Do this by measuring with a dc multimeter across the battery terminals.

Depending on the amount of charge the battery already has and the charging rate you should see about 14.2v or so when charging.

A fully charged battery at rest (say 2 hrs after charging) should read about 13v

A fully discharged and probably useless battery would give about 10.2v

 

[VicS]

Unless someone can come up with the proper instructions, rather than inspired guesses, I suggest you ask your Yamaha dealer for instructions or try one of the specialised outboard forums such as the Yamaha board at iBoats or MarineEngine.com

http://forums.iboats.com/yamaha-suzuki-outboards-26/

http://www.marineengine.com/boat-forum/forumdisplay.php?37-Yamaha-Outboard-Forum

As Jakeroyd suggests just to check the charging you can simply use a multimeter clipped to the battery terminals.

If when the engine is running the volts rise from the 12-point-something it will read initially to 14 or a little more then it will be charging.

 

[dingdongs]

ere ya go
yamaha wiring colours

 

[lw395]

I'm trying to install a voltmeter on to my Yamaha D50 outboard with the Yamaha 703 type control.

The Voltmeter unit has yellow and black wires for the guage and blue and black wires for the light. The control unit has single black, yellow, green and red wires plus pairs of red, blue and green wires. There were no fitting instructions in the box, is it as simple as yellow to yellow and black to black?

I want to check that the engine is charging the battery when it running as I can't pull start it if the battery went flat. I do carry an auxillary engine.

Thanks.

Do you have any other gauges, e.g. a rev counter?
If that has a light, connecting the voltmeter and its light in parallel with the rev counter light will probably give you a 12V that goes of when the ignition is off.
If there is a switch for the panel lights, then put the voltmeter in the supply side of that and its light in the load side of it.
The idea is that the voltmeter and it light go off when you switch the engine off, to avoid flattening the battery.
Alternatively, fit it direct to the battery, via a push button, you can then measure the battery before trying to start the motor.

 

[VicS]

You might find a manual and the info you need at http://boatinfo.no/lib/library.html#

 

[Samurai_Dave]

manual

I have the manual for the engine but it doesn't say much about fitting guages. The wiring of my control box doesn't match the one described in the book either.

 

[Samurai_Dave]

wiring guide

I've done some more digging and found this site which lists the wiring guides for various engine manufacturers.
http://continuouswave.com/whaler/reference/wireColorCode.html#Yam

 

[LadyInBed]

Forget the source of charge, you want to see the voltage across the battery so wire the voltmeter across the battery after the isolation switch.

This is the one I use.